 Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The variety of languages and cultures in Europe surely is a wealth, but it is also a burden. Barriers of language and culture are an almost insurmountable obstacle to the exchange of opinions among Europeans. They impede the emergence of a European public sphere, where political and cultural debate may be carried on beyond borders. The Europeans do not understand each other well enough even to disagree. The EU language propaganda completely ignores this. It presses young Europeans to learn languages, from infancy and for life, as many as possible, as different as possible. The Parliament and Council of the EU decreed in 2000 that language learning "enhances awareness of cultural diversity and helps eradicate xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance." Would it really? Of course not. If people all learn different languages, won't they still be unable to understand one another? There is hardly any connection between linguistic diversity and a sense of cultural diversity. Someone who knows Finnish, Swedish and Sama encounters much less cultural variation than someone who in French alone comes across Parisian lawyers, Québécois shopkeepers, Senegalese officials or Caledonian fishermen. Such cultural diversity is much greater still in the English language areas. While European propaganda aims at increasing the variety of languages that citizens learn, it achieves exactly the opposite of its publicly professed objectives. In fact, the policy of the EU institutions strengthens the hegemony of a single language: English. For example, the European Commission is committed to the exchange of students among member states so as to widen their cultural horizons. But in the competition for these students, universities in most countries now offer course programs in English. In effect, the more languages, the more English. Almost 90 percent of students on the European continent learn English as a foreign language. Half that many learn French, a quarter German, and one tenth Spanish. About half of European youngsters consider themselves able to carry on a conversation in English; not even a quarter in French. Ministries, school boards, parents and children have long opted for English as the European lingua franca. The Council of Europe and the EU refuse to acknowledge this fact even as it erodes the formal equality of the national languages of all the member states. That explains the promotion of learning many languages, it doesn't matter which. The schoolchildren of Europe disregard this advice and do what seems most sensible to them: they learn English. This best benefits communication in Europe, promotes public debate, guarantees cultural diversity and provides these youngsters with better career opportunities. Is there no alternative? The EU might acknowledge that in practice the languages of the member states are not equal. Some do not stand a chance outside their country's borders, and a few could continue to function as a vehicular language next to English: French in southern Europe, German in northern Central Europe, and, beyond Europe, Spanish in the Americas. If the Union wants to counteract the monopoly of English, it must dare to make a political choice in the language issue. Next to English, it should give priority to two or three other languages as border-transcending vehicular languages. Such realism in any case is to be preferred to the hypocrisy with which the EU and the Council now put young people on the wrong learning track. As long as they lack the political courage, the Union and the Council of Europe would do better to remain silent, in all languages of Europe. The writer is a professor at the University of Amsterdam and chairman of the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research. His most recent book is "Words of the world; the global language system." 
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